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Elon Musk Explains Why He's Building 'Starship' Out of Stainless Steel (popularmechanics.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader darkwing_bmf writes: In an exclusive interview with Popular Mechanics, SpaceX founder Elon Musk explains why stainless steel is the best material to build rocket ships, beating carbon fiber in cost, durability and even weight.
"As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s," reports Popular Mechanics.
"It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction..." Musk tells them. But among the other benefits "It has a high melting point. Much higher than aluminum, and although carbon fiber doesn't melt, the resin gets destroyed at a certain temperature... But steel, you can do 1500, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit."
"As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s," reports Popular Mechanics.
"It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction..." Musk tells them. But among the other benefits "It has a high melting point. Much higher than aluminum, and although carbon fiber doesn't melt, the resin gets destroyed at a certain temperature... But steel, you can do 1500, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit."
He follows the UK standard practice of using Fahrenheit for high temperatures and Celsius for lows.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The funny part is that the quote is incorrect - either he said Celsius and the article misquotes him or he said something wrong. The melting point of stainless steel is roughly 1500-1600 C (well somewhere in the range from 1325 - 1530)!
E.g. see: https://www.bssa.org.uk/topics...
I think whether you want temperature in C or Fahrenheit is a matter of taste. I grew up with C and think it is easy enough -
0C - melting point for ice - if it is below roughly 0 it might be icy and you should be carefull
17C or so is ok to swim in
21-23C nice indoor temp.
30C a bit too hot.
100C water boils.
What more is necessary to know?
Except that it's a privately held company, which means there aren't any shares on the market for you to buy / sell, and even if you could get one of the (restricted number of) private investors to play along, you wouldn't be able to get anyone else to play because there are certain windows of time when share sales / purchase are allowed. And a maximum amount of investors allowed.
This is why companies have IPOs and become publicly traded. You don't know what you are talking about.
Short version: you can't short a privately held company.
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